Fearful of her own guilt, she’s now trying to work out what she will do if it’s confirmed. Would she sacrifice herself to save this island as she told Emory earlier, or take her chances in the cauldron garden?
‘By my estimates, less than half of the village’s population can be sheltered in the cauldron garden,’ I say. ‘By choosing to save yourself, you’re effectively ending sixty-one lives.’
‘They’re simulacrums,’ she says, shrugging. ‘Their only value is how useful they are to us.’
‘Niema disagreed. She believed her work had evolved them.’
‘She saw what she wanted to see,’ disagrees Thea, immediately feeling a niggle of doubt.
She’s spent the last three weeks listening to Hui compose a concerto on her violin, and came to regard those nightly rehearsals as her favourite time of the day. The crums aren’t supposed to be capable of original thought, or creativity, but Hui was playing in a style entirely her own. Thea could hear the village under every note. Each movement was a season, lapped by the tides.
She was creating music inspired by this place, and time. There was nothing to suggest she was mimicking previous works.
Or, it’s been so long since I heard the violin played well that I can’t tell the difference any more, she thinks, reassuring herself.
She sighs, rubbing her eyes. This is the trap Niema fell into. She accepted close-to-human as being human-enough.
Thea can’t make the same mistake.
She rolls her stool away from the microscope, having made her decision. Niema’s dead and the evidence so far points to her being responsible. Of course she feels regret, possibly even a touch of shame, but she’s certain she would have had good reasons for her actions.
Niema was condescending, hypocritical and self-centred. She lied over and over again, abandoning Thea when she needed her most.
Thea can’t imagine what Niema must have done to finally make her snap, but she won’t willingly follow the old woman into the grave.
As long as she’s alive, there’s a chance she’ll find a way to destroy the fog and rescue her sister, something nobody else on this planet can do. For the good of everybody, she has to stop the truth from being uncovered.
What are a few lives compared to that?
THIRTY-EIGHT
‘Seth,’ I say, finally pulling the heavy blanket off his mind. ‘Wake up, I need you now.’
He grunts in his sleep, clumsily wiping a drop of seawater from his face.
‘Something’s happened. Wake up.’
Blinking, he finds himself lying in the bottom of the Broad Bottom Packet, his legs over the rear seat, his face staring up at the blue sky.
‘What the –’
He bolts upright in shock, finding himself still at sea, the anchor down. The island’s high cliffs are on his right, the blue and white lighthouse still flashing its warning. His clothes are covered in dried blood.
His hands scramble across his chest and thighs, trying to locate the source, but his only injury is a circular gouge on his calf, that’s nowhere near deep enough to be the cause.
‘The blood isn’t yours,’ I say.
That calms him, but only a little. The last thing he remembers was arriving at the mooring jetty under the lighthouse. He tied the boat up and …
‘Adil was there,’ he mutters, struggling for the memory. ‘He was waiting for us.’
‘Niema ordered me to wipe your memory of everything after that,’ I say. ‘Don’t strain yourself trying to recall anything, because you won’t be able to.’
‘Where is she?’ he asks.
‘Dead,’ I reply. ‘Emory found her body this morning.’
‘No, that’s not possible,’ he says, shaking his head stubbornly. ‘We were just talking.’
‘I’m sorry, Seth. I know you two were close.’
‘I was with her,’ he says, reeling. ‘I wouldn’t have let anything happen to her.’
‘There was nothing you could have done.’
For the next twenty minutes, he simply sits there, his eyes unfocused, his mind unmoored, swinging between denial and confusion.
I wish there was something I could do for him, but I know there’s not. I’ve watched hundreds of villagers lose loved ones and I’ve learned that the only guaranteed defence against grief is not loving at all.
Truthfully, I’m surprised more of them don’t consider it. Anybody whose hands occasionally catch fire should probably think about cutting them off.
‘You need to take the boat back to the village,’ I say softly. ‘It may help us understand what happened last night.’
He doesn’t respond.
‘It’s time to go,’ I say, in his thoughts. ‘Emory’s been charged with solving Niema’s murder. She’ll need to see this boat.’
‘Emory?’ he repeats, bewildered.
‘She’s being of service,’ I say. ‘The way you always wanted her to be.’
He picks up the oars and is about to row away when he notices a folded piece of paper on the floor of the boat.
He smooths out the creases, discovering a drawing of a party, done in charcoal. It must be one of Magdalene’s, he thinks.
Niema’s standing with Hui near the bird bath. The younger girl is clutching her violin, looking crestfallen, while Niema reassures her. Clara’s sitting on a bench, carving one of her birds, while the band plays and people dance.
The wind catches the corner of the page, trying to rip it from his hand. As it snaps back and forth, he realises there’s a diagram on the back. Squares and lines connected by numbers. They’re in his handwriting, which is perplexing, because he has no idea what they could mean.
Movement catches his eyes.
A silhouetted figure has appeared on the cliffs high above him, carrying something in its arms. It drops the bundle over the edge, then disappears out of sight.
Frowning, Seth points the boat towards the coast.
THIRTY-NINE
After unwrapping the bandages, Thea plunges her ragged hands into a bowl of scalding hot water, cleaning the blood off with a cloth. As a point of principle, she doesn’t show any discomfort, even though there’s nobody in her laboratory. Once they’re clean, she plucks a few more splinters out of her palms, and applies a clean bandage. Not for the first time, she wonders what must have happened last night to cause such curious injuries.
The light rattles, plaster dust falling from the ceiling. From the building next door, she hears the cable car shriek to a halt.
Hephaestus must be back, she thinks.
She goes to the gurney with Niema’s body on it, intending to cover the corpse before he sees it. Unfortunately, the sheet gets caught on the edge of the table, and she’s still trying to tug it free when Hephaestus comes striding through the door.
‘Oh, Christ,’ he says, shooting straight back out.
Covering Niema up, Thea follows him outside, where he’s crouched on the dusty ground, his head between his knees. Flies are swarming him in a thick haze, but he doesn’t seem to notice.
There’s a duffel bag beside him, emblazoned with the flaking logo of some ancient mountaineering brand. The angular edges of whatever’s inside are pressing against the material.
‘You okay?’ she asks.
‘Nowhere close,’ he replies hoarsely.
Thea takes stock of her browbeaten friend, struggling to find the right words to frame her sympathy. She’s always been awkward around emotion, whether trying to express it, or knowing how to acknowledge it. One of her favourite things about her friendship with Hephaestus is a strong understanding of each other’s moods, allowing them to bypass that uncertainty.